Nora Sullivan writes for the Daily Signal about the national significance of New York City’s mayoral race.
“Together, we can tax the rich, heal the sick, house the poor, defund the police & build a socialist New York,” Zohran Mamdani tweeted in 2020. On his current mayoral campaign website, he calls for shifting the city’s tax burden to “richer and whiter neighborhoods.”
These aren’t slip-ups or stray remarks. They are at the heart of his campaign for mayor of New York City this November. And if he wins, the fallout won’t just be felt here. It will ripple far beyond the five boroughs, dragging down not only New York but the nation as well.
I know a lot of Americans will shrug and say: “Well, New Yorkers get what they deserve.”
I get that reaction. I really do. Everyone has seen the footage of the spoiled brats at Columbia University taking over buildings and shouting in the faces of cops and thought these idiots should be put on a slow boat to Venezuela or some other socialist paradise.
But those people aren’t the ones who will bear the brunt of Mamdani’s experiment. Most of them aren’t even native New Yorkers. They’re mostly shipped in from leafy suburbs that are glad to get rid of them.
The real casualties will be New York’s middle class— the cops, firefighters, and nurses who hold this city together. My own family is full of them. I was born in the Bronx surrounded by firefighters and police officers who worked brutal shifts and risked their lives every day for their neighbors. These men and women aren’t radicals. They’re the ones who keep the city running and they’re the ones who will get squeezed the hardest.
Mamdani’s platform is as destructive as it is delusional: $10 billion in new taxes on high earners and businesses, a $30-an-hour minimum wage by 2030, rent freezes, so-called “free” buses, so-called “free” childcare, and even city-owned grocery stores.
